How many Characters is too many?
By Jamie Harper
Marjane Satrapi’s first instalment of the graphic novel series Persepolis, The Story of a Childhood, reminded me a lot of Belle Yang’s Forget Sorrow, in that they are both black and white stories about family, cultural and political revolution, leaving of the motherland, and they are both a little too difficult to keep track of in terms of specific details and individual characters. Like Forget Sorrow, I greatly appreciated some of Satrapi’s choices in designing her panels, such as the parallel between the children playing at the execution on page 1 and the strangling of Siamak’s sister on page 66, or the parallel between the massacre victims on page 40 and the layered spirits of those burned alive in the theatre on page 15. I also found it had the shallow story arc and flat storytelling of Forget Sorrow, and the incredibly similar character designs, but without the flavor of Yang’s art style that held my attention.
It is incredibly likely that Satrapi made the decision to present all of her characters in visual manners that were increasingly similar, as demonstrated on page 1 with the school portrait, as a commentary on wearing head coverings and hiding all sense of personality and uniqueness under the robe of religious devotion and piety and political coercion, but much like in Yang’s work, I feel like the black and white format served as a further obfuscation in terms of who was who. In the beginning, a reader could use the patterns on clothes, hair cuts, and height to differentiate between characters, as often facial characteristics were depicted as plain, minimalistic, and similarly structured, (p. 7). But over time, as Satrapi grows older, and taller, and the veil becomes more and more of a requirement for female characters to be safe, it becomes harder and harder to tell them apart, such as on page 93, when it becomes a confusing jumble of indiscernible women, and we cannot easily tell which ones we are meant to be tracking. This visual confusion also extends to the male characters, as hair color, the presence or lack of glasses, and moustache grooming become the main distinctions, as demonstrated on page 54, where we see Uncle Anoosh and his siblings.
This confusion over identity is not helped by Satrapi’s choice to continually introduce new characters throughout the narrative, often with these introductions being quick, sparse, and forgettable. The only character I could solidly keep in my brain after their swift introduction was Uncle Anoosh, and this is due to the fact he was the side character with the biggest impact within the actual story, as he tells Satrapi about the history of his life, family, and their culture as experienced within revolution or war time, all of which go on to shape Satrapi’s perspectives and beliefs within the rest of the novel. The rest of Satrapi’s tertiary, quaternary, etc. characters serve little actual, impactful, emotional purpose for either Satrapi or the reader, save quick reminders of death and persecution. In constructing narratives, one of the things writers must consider is, are all of the characters we develop necessary to the story, do they serve a greater purpose or move the story along, or do they only serve one minor role that can be passed off to another, more important character? It seemed to me that several of the characters could have been cut from Satrapi’s narrative with little effort or effect, like the male friend she had a crush(?) on, Kaveh, who we see mentioned briefly two times (p. 63 & 72), but has no lasting impact, or Satrapi’s mother’s childhood friend Mali, and her family (p. 88). Perhaps, like in Forget Sorrow, Satrapi struggled with knowing who to cut out and who to keep due to her story being a memoir, leading to the feeling of being bound to the truth, reality, and who was really there. I guess the question this graphic novel then brings up for me is, when do real people, be they influences for or active participants in a story, become characters, and once they become characters, when is it ok, or advisable, to treat them as such?
I have to agree that I also felt that the narrative had a certain flatness to it which made it hard to note moments of tension. Like in moments when there were acts of violence where I knew there should be tension I'm unsure of whether I felt tension because the narrative had built up the tension in that scene/episode or whether I felt tension because I thought that that moment should be tense.
ReplyDeleteThese are great questions to be asking ourselves about narration and what's needed and what isn't. I didn't come away with quite the same realizations that you did but I was having a hard time keeping track of everybody, and in general tried to make sense of the relevance of each section. I felt lost in time, but I think the cause was mostly the same. Great analysis Jamie!
ReplyDelete"I guess the question this graphic novel then brings up for me is, when do real people, be they influences for or active participants in a story, become characters, and once they become characters, when is it ok, or advisable, to treat them as such?"
ReplyDeleteI believe that memoirists often write based on moments of impact. They are struck in some way, moved, hurt, or maybe hit with numbness. Whatever it is, there's a feeling that this moment is part of a larger story of one's life. These moments ripple outward from their point of origin to define plot and characters, not the other way around. I don't think it functions like fiction, where characters and events and plots can change to suit larger goals. I think that because memoir is bound by impact and central points of origin, there's less "choice" as much as it is a consideration of whether a person in one's life really had impact on the narrator's story.